Fantasy sports and fantasy leagues are well known and becoming increasingly popular with sports enthusiasts. Generally, a fantasy sport is a simulation game where participants, usually real sports fans, select or draft currently active real-life athletes to form fantasy teams, and a fantasy league consists of a number of these participants and their fantasy teams. The fantasy teams in the fantasy league compete head to head against each of the other teams in the fantasy league, and a participant's success or failure in the fantasy league is determined by the won-lost record compiled during a fantasy season by the participant's fantasy team. The outcome of a fantasy game is determined by which fantasy team's athletes cumulatively performed better in each of the athletes' real-life athletic competitions the previous week.
Typically, an athlete's performance is based solely on the statistics the athlete garnered during the course of the athlete's real-life athletic competition, as determined at the end of the athletic competition. For example, in a football fantasy league, points (either positive or negative) may be assigned to athletes based on statistics such as touchdowns scored, extra points kicked, yards gained rushing, yards gained passing, completion percentage, yards gained receiving, fumbles recovered, fumbles lost, interceptions thrown, etc. In fantasy baseball, points (either positive or negative) may be assigned to athletes based on the number of total bases, number of hits, number of runs batted in, number of singles, doubles, triples and home runs hit, number of runs allowed, number of hits allowed, errors committed, etc.
A major problem with assigning points based purely on an athlete's cumulated statistics is that it does not account for the different situations during the course of the competition. For example, a three yard rush is different depending on the game situation. If the three yard rush play results in a touch down to win the game, it is a success, but if the three yard rush play came on fourth down with four yards to go with the team losing by one touchdown with five minutes to play in the game, the same three yard rush is a failure. Yet, conventional fantasy football statistics count the plays based solely on their yardage, and the three yard rush contributes the same to an athlete's total yards gained rushing during the competition, and the resulting points that are based on the total yards gained rushing.
Determining an athlete's performance based on the number of points exaggerates the problem. This is because conventional fantasy football scoring counts the one yard between the one yard line and the goal line as significantly more important than all of the other yards on the field. For example, a wide receiver may have caught a pass on third-and-twenty and ran for sixty yards to the opponent's one yard line before being tackled. On the subsequent play, the running back ran the remaining one yard for a touchdown. Has the running back done something special? Not really. Yet, conventional fantasy football scoring values the touchdown more than the sixty yard reception on the third-and-twenty play that set up the running back's touchdown.
Similar problems exist in conventional fantasy baseball scoring. For example, a home run hit by a batter in the first inning with the bases empty is valued less than a double when the team is down by one run in the ninth inning with two outs and runners on first and second base.
Similar problems are present outside of the fantasy realm. Many National Football League (NFL) scouts and talent evaluators determine the best players by adding up all of the yards gained by each player without regard to the situations in which the yards were gained or how many plays it took for the player to gain the yards. There is no distinction between the fifty yards gained by a player while running out the clock in the fourth quarter against the opposing team's first string defense with the player's team protecting a one point lead, and the fifty yards gained by the player in the fourth quarter against the opposing team's third string defense with the player's team trailing by three touchdowns. Similarly, in baseball, a home run hit by a player against the opposing team's fifth best relief pitcher while the player's team is leading by ten runs counts the same as a home run hit by the player that wins the game for the player's team in determining the value of the player. Likewise, in basketball, ten points scored by a player while the game is still undecided is counted the same as ten points scored by the player during “garbage time” after the game has been all but decided.